Global Requirements Engineering: Decision Support for Globally Distributed Projects

Global software engineering has gained in importance over the past decade. Many companies today conduct development projects in globally distributed teams. Coordination and communication over distance are key issues of global software engineering. In many cases, this communication is related to requirements. In this work, we try to gain new insights by looking at global requirements engineering from the perspective of "decision making": instead of looking at artifacts (requirements, architectural compontents, etc.), we can look e.g. at how decisions are made, what implications they have, or how they are communicated within globally distributed teams. Equally important, we also see the impact of the organizational form on decision making: the concept of so-called "chaordic" organization, which involves self-organizing teams ("chaos") and a frame organization ("order"). Also the analysis of communication relationships in globally distributed teams (social network analysis) is a proven method to detect problems early on. In this dissertation, these three aspects are combined to introduce a framework for decision support in global requirements engineering. We investigate leaders, followers and their interactions and aim at identifying patterns to better understand and improve decision making in global requirements engineering.